From Ada (Part Two, ch. 8):
"'I may not be as bright as I used to
be,' sadly said Ada, 'but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a
polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky. I read in this
morning's paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of cancer. I don't
know what the situation is in Poland.'
After a while he adored [sic!
Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette, however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing
her diamonds (in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before
her morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white valise and
blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green was pinned to the
pillow."
As I pointed out earlier, Cordula Tobak's alias
hints at Der Perwitsky, the fur of a European
polecat.
On the other hand, Tobak, Cordula de Prey's name in
her first marriage, reminds one of Fima Sobak, a friend of Ellochka
Shchukin* in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs. The strange name
Sobak** obviously comes from sobaka, "dog". "The Veens speak only to Tobaks / But Tobaks speak only
dogs"*** is the line Van quotes to Cordula when he meets her in Paris
(3.2).
caro Van + tabak = caravan**** + Tobak
caro - meat, flesh
(Lat.)
tabak - tobacco (Russ.)
Cordula's first husband is Ivan Tobak, a shipowner
and descendant of the famous Russian admiral (Tobakoff). I never saw it, but
there was a Soviet musical comedy Tabachnyi kapitan ("The Tobacco
Captain", 1944), by N. A. Aduev (pen-name of N. A. Rozenberg,
1895-1950) who, like VN, had graduated from the Tenishev school. The action
in it takes place in the times of the tsar Peter I.
*this may be irrelevant: the name Shchukin comes
from shchuka, "pike"
**Sobak (skoba, basok) = Boska; cf. Matka
Boska, Virgin Mary (Pol.)
***Вины говорят лишь с Тобаками,
А Тобаки говорят лишь с собаками (see also
"The Sores of Eros in Nabokov's Ada", my article in The Nabokovian
#50; this note has to be updated)
****cf. karavanchik [a little caravan] of
cigarettes on Ada's bedtable (2.8)
Alexey Sklyarenko